


A Suitable Girl

by likethenight



Category: The Palace (TV Show)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 03:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen Charlotte knows inside out the games that are being played every second all around her; she's played them herself and won, but then what's winning and what's losing, which way round does it go? Charlotte still isn't sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Suitable Girl

**Author's Note:**

> A rather rambling character study of Queen Charlotte, full of backstory that I've mostly made up because the series didn't give us much and there was never a chance to go into more depth. Clearly the history of the series diverged from ours at some point in the past, and for this interpretation I've chosen the point of divergence to be [Princess Charlotte of Wales](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Charlotte_of_Wales), the only daughter and heir of George IV, who in our history died following childbirth in 1817 and precipitated the succession crisis which eventually led to Princess Victoria ascending the throne in 1837. In this 'verse, Princess Charlotte did not die, and went on to become the equivalent of 'our' Queen Victoria, and it's her descendants who occupy the throne by the time of the series.
> 
> This character study will hopefully lead to a few more, and I'm vaguely intending to write a "series 2" sort of fic, although knowing me it probably won't materialise straight away. I know The Palace has a small-to-non-existent fandom but I'm hoping that there are more people like me out there, who really wish it hadn't been cancelled after one series and would like to read an idea of what might have happened if series 2 had ever materialised. If you're there, let me know! (and this is for beautifulandbright94 on Tumblr, whose message the other week prompted me to take another look at this story and realise that actually it was ready for posting)

"Love isn't for us," Queen Charlotte says to her eldest son, and she believes it utterly, through and through, right down to her heart of hearts, the little broken pieces that still miss Maybridge though it's been nearly twenty-five years. Since her earliest days she's been aware that life had a different purpose in store for her - or Daddy did, at least, and that was more or less the same thing. The daughter of a duke, fourth cousin once removed of James, Prince of Wales, she was raised and schooled to be a princess, and when the time came, a queen. 

She wasn't the only one, of course, there were at least three other girls in her year at Roedean alone whose parents were grooming them for the same role, a very exclusive pool of eminently suitable heiresses. Several of them were called Charlotte, their parents angling not-at-all-subtly for the 'top job' for their daughters, naming them after the great Queen Charlotte who led the British Empire to prosperity during the nineteenth century. An auspicious name for a future queen, and a very broad hint that here was the ideal bride for Prince James. The days when royalty only married royalty, princes and princesses imported from Europe, were gone by then; most of the upper levels of the nobility were only a couple of generations removed from minor royals, younger brothers and sisters of one monarch or other, so there were plenty of appropriately blue-blooded girls to choose from. All of them distantly related through the intangible, impenetrable web of the aristocracy, products of suitable marriage after suitable marriage, all of them ready and waiting for the all-important task: to continue the family line. They all grew up together, knew each other's secrets, each other's strengths and weaknesses, and very elegantly, very gracefully, they jostled each other out of the way, jockeying for the best position when James and David walked by - Jamie and Davie, of course, they'd all known each other since childhood after all, royal children need playmates just as much as anyone else. The games were different, that's all. Well, the children's games were the same, hide-and-seek, tag, kiss-chase if the nannies weren't looking - but the games the parents were playing were entirely less innocent. And the children grew up to play their parents' games too. Every girl was sure that she'd be chosen, at least outwardly - it would never do for Mummy and Daddy to hear of any doubts to jeopardise their plans, after all - but nobody really knew. Until Queen Philippa beckoned Charlotte's father aside at a reception at Buckingham Palace, and within a week the engagement of James, Prince of Wales, and Lady Charlotte Rutherford was announced. 

And so Charlotte stepped from one world into another, twenty-one and terrified, even though this was the role she'd been preparing for all her life. Their engagement was short, or as short as it was possible to be when a royal wedding had to be planned, although it was clear that this particular military operation had probably been being planned since before James was even born, planned around an anonymous presence, the unknown but terribly lucky girl who was going to be the Princess of Wales. It could have been any one of them, and Charlotte knew it - it didn't really matter which one ended up being the most suitable, she'd always known that, but she chose to forget about it, chose to pretend that all this fuss was really all about her. The wedding was spectacular, pageantry on a scale that only Great Britain can ever really pull off, and Charlotte sailed gracefully through the whole thing, never putting so much as a toe out of place and smiling, smiling, smiling all the while as if she was the happiest girl in the world. Well, of course she was, how could she be anything else? A whirlwind romance, the comics said, and Charlotte decided to believe them, because it really was terribly romantic. James - not Jamie now, not any more, always James now they were grown-up, now this was serious - James was charming and attentive, Mummy and Daddy were pleased as punch that all their plans had come off, and Charlotte herself was so thrilled at having won the game that it took a long time for the shine to wear off, for her to begin to wonder whether winning was all it was cracked up to be. It wasn't until a year or so after the wedding that she began to wonder whether actually she'd been playing another game without realising, a game she'd lost without even knowing. James didn't love her, and she was fairly sure she didn't love him, but there they were, a potential heir to the throne on the way, and Charlotte was at least fulfilling her purpose, doing her duty by her country, her husband and her king. 

When Eleanor was born, Charlotte's first reaction was bitter disappointment, that after everything she'd failed in the one thing she was there to do. But James had picked the baby up with an utterly rapt expression on his face, and said "Well, you never know, perhaps Parliament will change the rules for her. If she's anything like her mother, she'll make a marvellous queen," and Charlotte had simply stared at her husband, completely taken aback. 

But then James was like that. Part of the Establishment, but not without the capability to think outside the very gilded box that his people kept him in. Not much changed under his reign, but that was more because the system just wouldn't bend, it wasn't for lack of imagination on James' part. Charlotte often thinks that she is actually more conventional than he ever was. She wonders if perhaps he might have seen the law changed, if he'd lived longer, if perhaps given another decade or two Eleanor really would have ascended to the throne. Charlotte isn't sure what she thinks of that. Eleanor is a schemer in a league of her own, more talented at playing games even than Charlotte's own parents. Eleanor pulls strings and weaves her own cats' cradles of intrigue, and usually she gets her way. She caught Charlotte out, after all, with that silly game over the necklace. Eleanor probably would have made a good queen on the surface at least, but Charlotte fears for those who might find themselves crossing her. 

Not for Richard, though. He seems to be holding his own, unlikely as it might have seemed just a few months ago. He's taking a little time to adjust, but Charlotte has to admit that he's grown up to a degree that she would never have imagined him capable of. And she's relieved that the test results came out positive, for the country's sake as well as her own. George would have been a disaster - King Henry the Ninth indeed, Jeremy brought her that little titbit with an air of barely-suppressed horror - and Eleanor…Charlotte suspects that Richard actually understands what being monarch is really about better than Eleanor ever could.

Charlotte has every confidence that Richard will find himself a suitable bride sooner or later. He still has a little growing up to do, and perhaps Alice Templeton wasn't the right girl, but she isn't the only one out there. Not so much has changed in the last thirty years - there is still a good-sized pool of suitable girls among the aristocracy, childhood friends of Richard and his siblings, all still jockeying for position. They've become a little more intense since James' death, and Charlotte is sure that Alice has had to endure a few barbed remarks and sidelong glances in the last few weeks, but Alice is more than capable of dealing with her jealous peers. Besides, now that Alice is no longer one of the runners, the rest of those jealous peers have all just seen their chances improve. 

Charlotte feels a little sorry for Richard, that he will not be able to follow his heart, but she thinks he has realised by now that his life is not his own, that his choices are limited. He has to think of others above himself, millions of others, and he has to think of the establishment. He hasn't always managed to make the right decisions, but he is learning fast. He will choose one of those girls, hopefully one who can cope with the attention without too much fuss, and the monarchy will continue for another generation. And he'll learn not to want the things he can't have. Charlotte is fairly sure she isn't imagining the undercurrent of tension between Richard and his assistant private secretary, but it's all right; it won't last. Just as it didn't with her and Maybridge - though she still can't bear to think of him as 'Edward'. Common sense won out soon enough, and she won't deny that it hurt her terribly, but she can't say that she wouldn't have done the same, if she had her time over again. Although, if she had her time over again, knowing what she knows now, she would have been so much more careful. Wouldn't have let Maybridge near her, would have suffered through her loneliness and her fear in silence. She'd been queen only a little over a year, and it hadn't quite been living up to her expectations. Despite his attentiveness before the coronation, despite the fabulous gift he gave her, the Star of India glittering around her neck to reassure her, James had been more absent than ever before, his official duties coming first every time. As they should, as Charlotte knew they should, but knowing it had never made it any easier. Jeremy had been there, of course, faithful as ever even then, but Eleanor had been with the nannies most of the time and James had been away, and Charlotte had finally been coming to the inescapable realisation that there was no escape for her now. This was what her life would be from now until the day she died. This was her prize, so hard-won, far harder actually to bear. And Maybridge had been there, so charming, so dashing, so inescapable. It had felt inevitable at the time, and Charlotte had thought, 'well, if this life is my prize, don't I deserve a little compensation?' Her one moment of rebellion in a life of doing what was expected of her, and it nearly ruined everything so many years later. 

She had had a moment of panic when she had discovered that she was expecting her second child, and had suffered in silence throughout her pregnancy, unable to be sure about her calculations until the child actually arrived. But no child waited for ten and a half months before making an appearance, and she breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief when Richard was born, and not only because he was a boy. She knew that this was James' son, and that was enough for her. This ridiculous charade with the DNA tests might have been necessary to scotch the rumours, and she cannot deny that she has been a little amused by George's covert posturing, has used the amusement to smother the mortification, the guilt, the remembered pain. But she has always known that Richard is the rightful heir, the rightful king. 

She has to wonder, though, whether Eleanor would have turned out the way she did if she had been the heir to the throne, from birth or from childhood, through a change in the law. The sense of injustice seems to have powered Eleanor from the moment she realised that she would not inherit the throne simply because she was a girl. Too strong a character to accept it and channel her energy into serving her people, and probably encouraged by the way James doted upon her, she has grown up angry and bitter and manipulative, always scheming, always looking for a way to advance her position, to discredit her brother so thoroughly that the throne would have to fall into her waiting hands. Charlotte doubts that six months on a remote island will do anything to bring Eleanor closer to acceptance of her fate; she has wondered whether perhaps marrying her off to some European crown prince or other might do the trick, give her a chance at being queen somewhere else, but given Eleanor's legendary capacity for holding a grudge, it might not be the best diplomatic move. It would never do to have her on the wrong side should some crisis or other break out, for who knows whose strings she might pull, and to what effect? No, probably the best thing to do will be to give her some limited public role and marry her off to a duke or an earl or someone, and hope that she might find something to channel her energies into, something that might at least take the edge off her unhappiness. There will be no reconciling her and Richard now, Charlotte knows that, but hopefully it will be possible to manage her and to lessen her anger and her bitterness. Perhaps Eleanor will fall in love, and for her, at least, there might be a chance to follow her heart; Eleanor never mixes with anyone even the slightest bit inappropriate, after all. 

George and Isabelle, though. Charlotte is aware that she spends so much time worrying about her eldest children that the younger two do not get as much of her attention as they should, and consequently - or perhaps despite it - they are probably the two she should be worrying about the most. Isabelle is quietly swearing revenge against Richard for having her sent to hospital, never mind that it was the best thing for her at the time, and George - well, George was manageable until the DNA tests, but once he'd got the idea into his head that he might become king, the subsequent disappointment is threatening to turn him bitter, too. The last thing Richard needs is three jealous siblings, and Charlotte intends to have a conversation with George soon, to point out to him all the things he'd have to give up if he became king. He wouldn't be able to have nearly as much fun as he does at the moment, and Charlotte thinks he's forgotten that. And Isabelle…poor, neglected Isabelle, the youngest child, always forgotten because she has been away at school, no wonder she has been playing up so spectacularly. How to handle her? Charlotte feels as though she knows Isabelle the least, but her youngest daughter will not accept motherly intervention now, at this too-late stage. Another of her many maternal failings, and Charlotte wonders now if she was ever cut out to be a mother at all. It didn't occur to her at the time, of course, that was what you did, you got married and had children, whether you were a princess or a shopgirl; but now there is a world of opportunity that had only existed for the very confident when Charlotte was a girl. Take Alice Templeton, with her own charity and her own mind, and the confidence to stand up to the royal machine and say 'no, this is not for me'. Or take Abigail Thomas, self-made woman who is not afraid to stand her ground in the face of Eleanor's scheming or Richard's temper, although Charlotte hasn't yet worked out what it was that Eleanor was playing at with Abigail. So much opportunity, and children only a part of the equation if a woman wants them to be. If she had her time over again…if she had been born even a quarter of a century later, perhaps her options would have been different, perhaps she would have been able to stand up to Mummy and Daddy and say 'no, not yet, first I want to live.'

But then could she really have given up all this? Could she have given up a crown and the knowledge that her son would lead his people into the next millennium, even for the freedom to live and love as she chose? It's not a fair question to ask herself, because she knows no other life, can't even begin to imagine how it would have been if she had chosen a different path. But knowing what she knows now, even without her freedom, in a life she never really chose, Charlotte would not give all this up for the world. And she hopes that her children will come to see it her way.


End file.
